S is for Stop Sign MazeClick for Maze Solution of Stop Sign Maze
Maze of a Stop Sign to go right next to the maze of the letter S for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet, basica reading, and how to count. The maze begins in the upper left corner and ends in the lower right corner. Try to solve the maze in as little time as possible, and by starting at the begining and going all the way to the end of the maze. By Yonatan Frimer.

U is for Union MazeClick for Maze Solution of Union Maze
Maze of two hands holding to form a union, to go right next to the maze of the letter U for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet, basica reading, and how to count. The maze begins in the upper left corner and ends in the lower right corner. Try to solve the maze in as little time as possible, and by starting at the begining and going all the way to the end of the maze. By Yonatan Frimer.Maze source for Union Maze

E is for Electricity MazeClick for Maze Solution of Electric Outlet Maze
Maze of an electrical outlet with psychedelic lightning bolts coming out of it. The maze starts in the upper-left corner and the maze ends in the lower right-hand corner. This maze goes with the maze of the letter J for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet, basica reading, and how to count. By Yonatan Frimer.

J is for Jump MazeClick for Maze Solution of Jump Maze
Maze of a car driving in a skid, almost drift pattern. Maze starts in the upper left corner and the maze exits in the lower right corner. This maze goes with the maze of the letter J for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet. By Yonatan Frimer.

H is for Horse Maze

Click for Maze Solution of Horse Maze
Maze of a horse, the animal humans used to ride to travel before the car or train was invented. It was either that or walking. Maze starts in the upper left corner and maze ends in the lower right corner, marked by the arrows. This maze goes with the maze of the letter H for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet. By Yonatan Frimer.

L is for Lion Maze

Click for Maze Solution of Lion Maze
Maze of a lion, the king of the jungle and top of the food chain other than humans. Known for their courage, lions are power animals that control large territories and roam and hunt them. Maze starts in the upper left corner and maze ends in the lower right corner, marked by the arrows. This maze goes with the maze of the letter L for the kids book, “Learn To A Maze” Which uses mazes to teach kids the alphabet. By Yonatan Frimer.

Number Three (3) MazeClick for Maze Solution of Number Three (3) Maze
Maze of the number three (3) created by Yonatan Frimer. Maze of from the numbers chapter of the book “Learn To A Maze” which helps kids learn the alphabet and numbers through the use of mazes.

Number Nine (9) MazeClick for Maze Solution of Number Nine (9) Maze
Maze of the number nine (9) created by Yonatan Frimer. Maze of from the numbers chapter of the book “Learn To A Maze” which helps kids learn the alphabet and numbers through the use of mazes.

Number Six (6) MazeClick for Maze Solution of Number Six (6) Maze
Maze of the number Six (6) for the maze learning book “Learn To A Maze”. Maze starts in the upper left corner and ends in the lower right corner. Created by Yonatan Frimer

Maze of a deer caught in the headlights. Optical illusion psychedelic effects are caused by perpendicular lines to represent the shape of a deer. Causes the image to process in the brain longer and more memorable maze.

We invite you to also visit some of these links to check out some more mazes:

These mazes are from Yonatan Frimer’s upcoming book, “Learn To A Maze”. An edutainment booklet that teaches children (and adults!) the alphabet and simple reading using mazes. For more examples of Yonatan Frimer’s mazes, visit Team Of Monkeys . com or Ink Blot Mazes . com

Reasons Monkeys Do Not Make Good Pets

Monkeys are expensive to house and feed, and some require specialized diets that can be time consuming to prepare. A significant commitment of time is needed just for routine care and cleaning up after a pet monkey, but more importantly a monkey needs a large amount of social interaction and attention from the owner. A pet monkey deprived of your time and attention will only develop severe behavior problems and psychological issues.

There is something irresistible about an infant monkey – they appear so sweet and helpless, and seem so much like a human infant in many ways. However, those sweet babies grow up into difficult adults, and as a general rule adult monkeys do not make good pets. Their intelligence makes them special, but ultimately makes them a very challenging pet.

Commitment
Taking on a pet monkey is a long term commitment. A well cared for monkey can live anywhere from 20-40 years, and needs your full commitment throughout their lives. A pet monkey cannot do without your attention when life gets busy or circumstances change.
Monkeys may not take well to new people in your life (including spouses and children), and make it hard to get away for vacations. Finding a new home for a pet monkey is extremely difficult, and very hard on the monkey which has bonded to its first owner.

Legal IssuesMonkeys may be illegal to keep as pets in some areas. Check locally as well as state or province wide. If legal, permits may be required, and sometimes permit holders are subject to inspection for proper facilities and care.

Medical Issues
A wide range of diseases can be passed from monkeys to humans. See “Zoonoses Acquired from Pet Primates” by David M. Renquist, D.V.M., M.A. and Robert A. Whitney, Jr., D.V.M., M.S. for a thorough discussion of this aspect. Finding a vet who is able and willing to treat a primate may also be difficult. Monkeys are also susceptible to a variety of illnesses of humans, which can be devastating for the primate.

Aggression
The sweet dependent baby monkey will eventually grow up, and become the wild animal it was meant to be. Unfortunately, raising a monkey around humans doesn’t change the wild nature of monkey, and in fact depriving a pet monkey of normal social relationships with other monkeys can create behavior problems and neuroses.
Pet monkeys also have a tendency to bite. They have different personalities so one cannot generalize, but some monkeys will be very aggressive, and others will be more docile. Nevertheless, monkeys are unpredictable and may turn aggressively on anyone, including the person to whom they are the closest.

The Mess
Monkeys are messy. They can’t really be effectively toilet trained (many younger monkeys can be diapered or at least partly toilet trained, but that is often lost at maturity) and sometimes engage in distasteful activities involving their feces and urine.
Aside from the toileting messes, pet monkeys can be extremely mischievous and destructive, especially if bored.

Housing
Monkeys need a large secure enclosure and should spend time outdoors too if possible. They must be provided with a wide variety of ever changing toys and exercise equipment to keep them challenged and stimulated, or they will suffer from boredom.

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Malaysian Government Halts Monkey Export

Following our recent campaign, we are pleased to tell you that the Malaysian Government has announced its intention to reinstate the ban on exporting macaques for purposes including research.This is a major victory for Malaysian primates and follows an international campaign by animal and environmental groups in Malaysia and across the world.We’d like to thank those of you who supported us. Your actions have directly helped in the Malaysian Government’s decision to reinstate the ban on the export of primates for research.

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The Impossible Housing and Handling Conditions of Monkeys in Research Laboratoriesby Viktor Reinhardt, former research veterinarian
August 2001

I used to associate cruelty against monkeys with pictures of individual animals subjected to experimental procedures that obviously inflicted extreme pain.

Personally I see no ethical justification for any research which inflicts pain, distress, or suffering on animals, and primates in particular.

However, this type of research is a given reality and, as long as it continues, I feel a strong obligation to at least promote refinement techniques that lessen the suffering of animals whose lives are involuntarily sacrificed for a questionable research enterprise. When I do nothing I betray not only the animals but I also betray my humane nature.

When I saw a primate research facility from the inside for the first time, I quickly realized that the cruelty against monkeys is much more pervasive than I had concluded from the horrible pictures. The suffering is not restricted to the inhumane experimental procedure itself but extends to every single hour of the animal’s life in the laboratory.

More than 700 macaques – the prevailing primates in the research laboratory – were locked behind bars, fearfully waiting to be forcefully removed and immobilized during life-threatening procedures.

The situation was reminiscent of a high security prison for convicted criminals, though none of the animals was guilty of any crime other than being a helpless victim.

Each monkey was kept alone, in a cage that was so small that he/she could not take a few steps in one direction, let alone jump or run in monkey fashion. There was no companion to huddle, groom or play with.

It should be remembered that macaques are primates – just like us – who have an intensive need for social contact and social interaction. Solitary living conditions are similarly unbearable for them as it would be for us.

Most cages were completely barren, offering not even a perch that would have allowed the animals to make use of the arboreal dimension. In the wild, macaques spend most of the day in elevated sites – away from ground predators – and seek the refuge of trees at night.

When kept in cages without a high perch, the animals have no way of retreating to a “safe” place during alarming events, such as when a staff member approaches them. Being cornered in this manner must, indeed, be a very distressing experience for a helpless monkey who associates people with painful and distressing handling procedures.

In order to accommodate as many monkeys in one room as possible, cages were arranged in double-tiers with one row stacked on top of the other. This condemned half of the animals to confinement in a permanently shady, cave-like environment. Needless to say, this was not a living quarter that was suitable for diurnal animals.

The conditions I witnessed were so depressing that most monkeys had developed stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking, bouncing, somersaulting, swaying from side to side, biting parts of their own bodies, pulling their ears, tossing their heads back and forth, or smearing feces on the cage walls.

When I expressed my concern about these alarming signs of distress, I was told that they are “abnormal” behaviors that the animals develop when kept in cages for a long time. My conclusion was different: the appalling caging environment was abnormal – not the behavior of the monkeys.

It was hard for me to believe that the situation I had seen was typical. I therefore decided to contact animal care personnel of other laboratories and survey the scientific literature to find out how macaques are housed and handled in other research facilities.

What I heard and what I read confirmed what I had seen myself, leading me now to the following conclusion. In the U.S. there are currently approximately 15,000 macaques imprisoned in double-tier stacked solitary cages waiting in fear to be subjected to distressing procedures.

The conditions under which these animals are forced to live are so inadequate that researchers themselves have repeatedly admitted in scientific publications that about 10 out of 100 caged monkeys are so desperate that they mutilate themselves.

The recent scandal at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center – one of the most prestigious facilities in this country – gives the public a rare opportunity to get a sobering look behind the doors and see for themselves that the manner in which most primates are currently being housed and handled is not only inhumane but at the same time counterproductive to good research.

Wouldn’t it be naive to expect scientifically valid research data from an intelligent, social animal who is forced to live alone in a barren cage with nothing to do but engage in self-injurious behavior out of utter frustration?

Providing monkeys in research institutions with primate-adequate housing and humane handling conditions would be a guarantee that scientific data are not unnecessarily skewed by uncontrolled extraneous variables.

There is no doubt that primatological investigators could do their research with fewer animals – and hence avoid a lot of unnecessary suffering and squandering of tax dollars – if they would make sure that the animals are not behavioral cripples as a result of under-stimulation, and that they do not suffer distress during handling procedures.

The ethical and scientific concerns arising from the prevailing housing and handling practices of monkeys have been acknowledged by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1991 stipulating in the Regulations and Standards of the Animal Welfare Act that:

The housing arrangement of monkeys must [emphasis added by author] address the social needs of the animals, the cage environment must [emphasis added by author] be enriched by providing means of expressing monkey-typical behaviors, lighting must [emphasis added by author] be uniformly diffused and provide sufficient illumination for the well-being of the monkeys, handling should be done as carefully as possible in a manner that does not cause stress or unnecessary discomfort.

These legal requirements are consistent with guidelines promulgated by the International Primatological Society in 1989/1993 and recommendations set forth by the National Research Council in 1998.

Many reports have been published in scientific journals outlining well-tested options for addressing the social needs of monkeys in the research laboratory, for enriching their environment in a species-adequate manner, for assuring uniform lighting conditions, and for training the animals to cooperate, rather than resist, during common handling procedures such as capture, injection, topical drug application, and blood collection.

This information has also been compiled in bibliographies and a comprehensive database which can be accessed on the Internet at no cost.

How is it possible that investigators keep research monkeys under living conditions and handle them in ways that are in gross violation with federal rules and professional standards?

Here are my thoughts.

Lack of interest

A prestigious researcher conceded in an American scientific journal:

Most investigators think only briefly about the care and handling of their animals and clearly have not made it an important consideration in their work.

It is true, for many researchers the monkey is merely an identification number attached to a computer-processed data entry, and they consider it a waste of their time to visit the animals and check for themselves if they are properly housed and handled.

Arrogance

To quote from the same article:

Finally, I think that all investigators consider themselves upstanding citizens of excellent ethical and moral character. Their feeling may be that since they are moral and ethical in every sense of the word, they are quite capable of monitoring their own animals without outside interference.

Without question, most investigators regard compliance with the minimum housing standards set forth by the federal Animal Welfare Act as a nuisance.

Inertia of tradition

Many scientists resist any changes in the traditional husbandry practices of research monkeys, probably because of fear that historical data will be invalidated by different, albeit better, housing and handling conditions.

Lack of ethical concern

It is not uncommon for investigators to treat monkeys with little or even without ethical reservations. A world-famous scientist made this quite clear when he explained that experimentation with human patients is hampered by “sound ethical constraints”, but that, “No such problems exist for the monkey researcher.”

The present situation in primate research laboratories strongly suggests that professional judgment is no guarantee that the inhumane housing and handling conditions of laboratory monkeys will ever improve.

Progress will be possible only if USDA makes more serious efforts to enforce the federal law as Congress intended.

Until then, the well-being of research monkeys will continue to depend on the mercy of scientists who traditionally view them as research objects and treat them accordingly.

USDA Regulations and Standards give the public the impression that monkeys in research laboratories are housed and handled in ways that reflect minimum ethical concern for their well-being. The prevailing housing and handling conditions of monkeys give testimony that these federal rules are not enforced properly. If you care for the well-being of animals, and of caged primates in particular, you may want to contact:

Please request that APHIS enforce more effectively the Animal Welfare Act’s Specifications for the Humane Handling, Care and Treatment of Nonhuman Primates. Rules have no meaning unless provision is made that they are actually followed! Request that stronger regulations are needed to ensure the well-being of captive primates.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Viktor Reinhardt has worked for ten years as an ethologist and clinical veterinarian at a primate research facility where he took care of the animals’ health and introduced more humane housing and handling conditions for them.

After the laboratory hired a new director, Dr. Reinhardt’s work was no longer appreciated and his contract terminated in 1994.

He joined the Animal Welfare Institute, Washington DC, in the same year where he continues ‘from outside’ to promote better living conditions for nonhuman primates in research institutions.

The Animal Welfare Institute has recently published Environmental Enrichment for Caged Rhesus Macaques – A Photographic Documentation and Literature Review.

You can order a free copy of this book by sending an e-mail to awi@awionline.org or by phoning 202-337-2332.

Nuclear Obama: Will Cap-and-Trade Plans Spur Nuclear Revival?

By Keith Johnson

Will President Obama—no huge booster of nuclear power on the campaign trail—become the nuclear industry’s best friend?

Nuclear dream team? (AP)

Here’s the thinking making the rounds in pro-nuclear circles: The Obama administration has talked up the need to dramatically curb greenhouse-gas emissions, and even included revenues from a non-existent cap-and-trade scheme in its 2010-2014 budget. To curb emissions so much will require an across-the-board development of low-emissions energy, from wind farms to, yes, more new nuclear plants.

Someone in the administration — probably Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who knows in his heart that wind and solar can’t cut it — will suggest that that a carbon tax be coupled with the revival of nuclear power. Suddenly, the dam will break. NRC regulatory mazes that are still trying to protect us from Three Mile Island will be swept aside. Construction schedules will be accelerated. (The TVA just built a new reactor at Watts Bar in three years and under budget, using a license granted in the 1970s.) Tens of thousands of construction jobs will be created overnight. The French and Japanese will provide the financing. We may even revive the steel industry in the process.

The idea that the climate-change imperative will give fresh legs to nuclear power isn’t entirely new; that’s what’s pushing once-hostile environmentalists toward the pro-nuclear camp. And a carbon tax or at least expensive emissions in a cap-and-trade program would go a long way toward improving nuclear power’s currently grim economics.

But even an Obama administration bear hug that “sweeps aside regulatory mazes” won’t necessarily “accelerate construction schedules”—those depend in large part on financing and getting a hold of sometimes limited nuclear components. And while a big nuclear build out would indeed create as many as 20,000 jobs, it would be hard to create them overnight, given the three-decade atrophy of the U.S. nuclear industry.

What’s really missing is any discussion of nuclear waste. Now that Yucca Mountain’s been given the Old Yeller treatment, there is no long-term solution for storing nuclear waste that’s remotely close to fruition. For the current fleet of nuclear reactors, which produce about 2,000 tons of radioactive fuel a year, the death of Yucca Mountain just means business as usual.

But sooner or later, if nuclear power becomes an even bigger part of the nation’s energy mix, the nuclear waste problem is going to have to become an even bigger part of the answer.

OraGanizational Overview

Team of monkeys . com, founded in February 1964* is a subsidiary of STOM Research, founded in December 1961*. Utilizing the vast resources at its disposal, STOM Research has resulted in conclusive evidence that monkeys working in teams can benefit the human race in ways not previously accepted because monkeys working alone are unable to perform the same task(s).

1977 – Shakespear Theorum proved wrong. Even an infinite number o monkeys working in an organized team will still not render the complete works of shakespears complete works in proper order.

1988 – Internet is opened to the commercial public enabling teamofmonkeys.com to be available to non-military personnel.

About STOM Research

The Gateway to Team Work

STOM Research is an international laboratory superior monkey training, providing some of the most technologically advanced facilities for their research into the basic building blocks of STOM. Specialist facilities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for individual nations to build include advanced modulators such as the Massive Ion Modulator and facilities for the production of exotic forms of teams, including anti-teams.[sic]

STOM has established a reputation at the forefront of research, proven through its experiments, past and present. STOM Labs are also a vibrant meeting place for discussion and debate; around half of the world’s top researchers come here to share their research. This is reflected in the experiments, which are usually run by international collaborations, bringing together both human and monkey teams from different institutes towards a common goal. [ibid]

Soon after its establishment, the work at the laboratory went beyond the study of team leadership into lower level dynamics, an activity which is mainly concerned with the study of interactions between the lower level team members. Therefore the laboratory operated by STOM is commonly referred to Team Of Monkeys rather thank “Team Leadership” [et al]